A bond measure floated by the Long Beach Community College District for the June 7 election has received its official letters.

But whether Measure LB — an $850 million bond college officials say is needed to modernize classrooms and improve programs — can secure the 55 percent voter approval needed will largely depend on how big an appetite Long Beach voters have for additional taxes.

There are plenty on the menu this year.

In addition to the LBCCD bond, Long Beach voters will decide on June 7 whether a sales tax increase is the best to way to fund city infrastructure and public safety improvements. The current sales tax rate in Long Beach is set at 9 percent, and if a majority of voters approve Measure A, the city would add 1 percentage point to Long Beach’s tax rate for six years, with the increase dropping to a half of a percentage point the following four years.

Proponents of the measure, which has been touted as a way to pay for a portion of the city’s identified $2.8 billion worth of infrastructure needs and to reverse the recent year’s budget cuts to Long Beach’s police and fire departments, say it will initially generate about $48 million in revenue annually.

A companion measure, known as Measure B, would designate that 1 percent of any future tax revenues be placed in a “rainy day” fund.

The June 7 ballot measures appear to precede more tax votes before Long Beach residents.

The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority board of directors released a plan Thursday for a 45- to 50-year transit tax that would generate more than $120 billion for highway, rail and bicycle projects throughout Los Angeles County.

Metro aims to place the half-cent sales tax measure — which would span the next 40 years, in addition to continuing the current tax for an extra 18 years — on the November ballot.

Then there’s the Long Beach Unified School District, which is considering a property tax measure as high as $1.5 billion for the November ballot. Officials say the money will be used for new air conditioning, lead and asbestos removal and repairs to numerous aging buildings.

District officials have not determined the possible cost of the bond measure to homeowners, and the school board has yet to approve such a measure.

Voters in 2008 approved Measure K to raise $1.2 billion from property taxes to construct, refurbish and repair local schools, and to build three new high schools. The projects in the new potential tax increase were not covered in Measure K.

What are the chances of each measure passing? That depends on the mood of the voters, said Wade E. Martin, director of the Office of Economic Research in the Department of Economics at Cal State Long Beach.

“When there are multiple related items on the ballot, it is often difficult to get positive votes on all,” Martin said in an email. “This is where the media comes in and each group tries to differentiate their cause/need so the voter invests more cognitive effort in thinking about the issues. A major factor in these succeeding is how confident the voters are in their economic future. The more secure they feel, the more likely one or more will pass.”

Martin said bonds for LBCCD have done well in past elections, but the success of the city sales tax measure may be hard to predict. The positives are that the sales tax has a sunset clause and is spread over residents and visitors so it may be viewed as less burdensome to local residents, he said.

On the other hand, it is regressive in general since lower income people spend more of their income than do higher income people, and a general negative attitude toward any general tax increase may sway voters against the measure, Martin said.

“The main issue will be how does the voting public view the priorities of public safety and infrastructure projects compared to the added tax — do they think they will get the expected benefits?” Martin said.

Some already are forging opposition to the sales tax measure.

The ballot measure has been proposed as a general tax, meaning that the City Council could spend future revenues on any aspect of city business, although Mayor Robert Garcia has said he would veto any future votes to spend any new sales tax dollars on anything other than its intended purpose.

“My main argument against the sales tax is that it’s not going to go where it’s intended,” Ryan said. “Go do some layoffs or something. Let’s face it, private industry has to do it to survive. Go fix the problems first, then come after the money.”

Measure LB

In LBCCD, if 55 percent of voters approve Measure LB, property owners would pay an estimated maximum of $25 more annually per $100,000 of assessed property value.

According to the L.A. County Auditor-Controller’s Office, the community college district already bills property owners $38.25 per $100,000 of assessed property value.

The median home value in Long Beach was $507,600 at the end of February, according to Zillow.com, an online real estate site. If Measure LB passes, property owners in Long Beach could pay about $63 per 100,000 of assessed property value. District officials say they continue to look for opportunities to refinance and lower the overall debt, meaning the bill to property owners can fluctuate downward.

President Eloy Ortiz Oakley of LBCCD is confident the measure will pass.

“This community has consistently seen the value of investing in our college and school district, and education in general,” Oakley said. “Unlike the other measures, we have a track record and taxpayers can see with their own eyes where the money is going.”

Measure LB follows building projects funded by bonds dating back to 2002. Voters then approved Measure E at $176 million to complete projects such as a new child development center at the Pacific Coast Campus.

An extension of Measure E in 2008 called for $440 million to fund projects such as new mathematics classrooms, technology and culinary arts programs, and was approved again by voters.

Coming to voters for a third time in about 15 years may prove difficult, according to one observer.

William J. Crampon, a researcher with Rethinking Greater Long Beach, which looks at economic, education, health and demographic issues in the city, said with presidential politics in the air, and a push on the campaign trail to cut government spending as well as taxes, he expects voters to shoot down each tax measure.

“Most of the voters, especially with what’s going on on the presidential side, are going to vote no across the board,” Crampon predicted. “It’s going to be so much stuff coming out of the presidential election on the cost of government and everything else, and so much of it is negative. There’s all sorts of anti-government stuff going on. In this current political environment, I can’t see a tax going through.”

Crampon said the sales tax initiative may be doomed in the mind of taxpayers concerned that the general tax can eventually be used for any city projects, but homeowners may be more open to the LBCCD bond, as they have supported tax measures in the past.

That’s what Oakley and other LBCCD officials are banking on.

“If for some reason it doesn’t pass, then we’ll come back to the voters again in the future,” he said. “We can come back in November or the next election cycle and prove our case again. … These days there’s always a lot of things going on on any ballot. I just really believe that the voters in this community value education.”

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